Elves And Levels

[Umbran]

And you are welcome to use the XP system TO track NPC level. It's just as much a variant.

Um, Psion, I'm afraid to say it, but you're wrong on this one. It's not a variant.

DMG, pg 36 (bottom of the right-hand column): "NPCs gain experience the same way that PCs do (see Chapter 7: Rewards for details). "

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Now, about elves - in the end, how quickly one gains levels isn't about "rules". It's about the behavior of the character. When we're discussing an entire race, it then becomes an issue of mass psychology.

Look at the age tables in the PHB, pg 93. People have been talking about how high a level someone would get in 73 years. That's a bit silly. By age 73, a human is "venerable", meaning he's an old geezer. He's lost six points from Str, Con, and Dex. He's gained 3 points of Wis and Int - meanign that he's smart enough to know that he shouldn't be adventuring!

How many old people are likely to be adventuring? Few, I imagine. If you're at an age where you'd consider retiring from a clerking job, you're likely to retire from a more strnuous, life threatening job like adventuring. So, most folks are going to stop running around with swords by the time they reach "old" (about 53, for humans). After that point, they really aren't up to snuff, and are starting to put their lives in serious jeopardy. Adventuring is a young man's game.

Now. look at those age tables again, but look at elves, specifically. An elf is looking at spending over half his life as "old". Now, humans are looking at spending over 40% of their lives as old, not so big a difference, percentage-wise. But for the elf, we're talking about 250 to 500 years as an old man!

Think about that for a moment. An elf is looking at spending about the amount of time since Columbus sailed until now as an old man, past his prime, feeling arthritis pain, relaxing in the summer sun, etc. I seriously doubt that a race with such longevity is going to behave in the same way humans would.

It seems to me that elves simply have more to protect than humans do. While some PCs may take it upon themselves to do more and be more, the vast majority aren't going to throw that much sweet life away on a lark. An elf is going to have to see a real need before he gets his butt in gear and risks his life - because he's got a lot to risk. Even those elves who have PC classes will likely nto be in any rush to plunder the next tomb. After all, the elf has the option of waiting until the next tomb is dug.

Any way you choose to play it - elves are not going to be merely long-lived peole with basically human psychology. If they have different psychology, they will behave differently. If they behave differently, they generally won't gain levels the way humans do.

 

[mmadsen]

Monster Levels Count Too

A great wyrm dragon has lived for more than a millenia (IIRC). That's what, about twice as the average elf. Should we always slap 20-30 class levels to great wyrms ?

A red great wyrm already has 40 hit dice, with 6 skill points per hit die, reflecting the vast life experience you'd expect of such an old, wise dragon. What does a dragon need with class levels?

 

[mmadsen]

Dragons fight adventurers, and also probably fight the other powerful monsters of the region. After all, there's a WAY they gather all that treasure...it doesn't just drip from their wings, they've gotta get it the same way PC's do -- beating up big bad evil things in smelly crypts and taking their gold.

The archetypal dragon swoops in, wipes out a dwarf kingdom, and sits on his newly won hoard, sleeping days, months, and even years away.

Every few decades, a band of adventurers thinks they will become heroes by slaying the dragon, and every few decades the dragon clears his throat -- maybe earning experience, maybe not, depending on how credible a threat the adventurers posed.

 

[mmadsen]

City of the Spider Queen, for example, presumes people will get something like 8 levels in less than a year. People who do get on that escalator are going to lose fingers and toes at an alarming rate.

Beautiful metaphor, Graf.

As seasong points out, the limiting factor in gaining levels in adventuring (PC) classes is surviving that many violent clashes. If it takes 13 challenging skirmishes to make it to the next level, what fraction of the armed populace (a) faces the enemy 13 times, (b) faces the enemy with even or worse odds 13 times, or (c) faces the enemy with even or worse odds 13 times and lives?

I would expect the elven military, for instance, to have many skilled sergeants/centurions, soldiers who've seen battle and lived but who never grew old and retired. I wouldn't expect a long-lived race to necessarily have many more soldiers who've lived through dozens of near-death encounters though.

On the other hand, if we look at non-adventuring classes that take non-violent risks, we have to expect the long-lived elves to have a huge advantage over time. A typical elf might very well be a 10th-level Expert, and the elf militia might be full of Exp10/Ftr3 soldiers. (It's too bad D&D ties noncombat skill & expertise to hit dice, so we can't model this properly.)

 

[hong]

Re: Monster Levels Count Too

A red great wyrm already has 40 hit dice, with 6 skill points per hit die, reflecting the vast life experience you'd expect of such an old, wise dragon. What does a dragon need with class levels?

Tax reasons.


Hong "have you seen those marginal rates for monster HD?" Ooi

 

[mmadsen]

I think that elves all being very high levels would make for a great alternate viewpoint on D&D - somewhat more Tolkien-esque, really, or recalling the Celtic legends that the Professor drew from.

That's exactly what I've suggested in the past. Tolkien-esque elves don't need all sorts of racial bonuses; they simply need to be high-level characters.

I had an idea for a world with a dominant culture like this - the elves did not have the "flighty" CG mentality, but instead a more organized, orderly (Lawful) mindset. Their superior skill at arms and magic allowed them to conquer large swathes of territory and set up an empire and a bureaucracy worthy of ancient China.

Pretty cool idea.

These half-elves, although members of the aristocracy by virtue of their elven blood, would often not live long enough to inherit their elven parent's holdings, creating a large class of people eager to gain their own lands, by whatever means necessary.

OK, now that is an extremely cool idea, drnuncheon.

 

[Zappo]

I think this doesn't make a whole lot of sense...Baatezu and Dragons are continually fighting things that are EXTREMELY difficult. Adventurers, for one, and the more they kill the harder the groups get.

Not really... not at those levels. Dragons may every now and then be challenged by a powerful party, but how many 18th level parties are there around? Not many. And even those will only net a minimum amount of XP to a gold great wyrm dragon. How many 23rd level parties are there? We're talking about epic encounters. Fights that get sung in legends for centuries afterwards. You don't get 13.33 of them so easily!

As for fiends, pit fiends and the like spend most of their time planning and doing politics. They wage wars on other fiendish lords, yeah, but they carry armies with them... and for politics, remember that fiends take centuries or millennia to unfold their plans - outsmarting a rival devil might net a worthy amount of XP, but again it's not something you do very often unless the threat was minimal (in which case you still don't gain XP).

I am aware, though, that the argument is less solid where extraplanar beings are involved, due to the relative abundance of powerful threats. For this reason, I routinely add a few levels to experienced Blood War leaders (and more than a few to the real high ups).

But definitely not 20 levels to each balor or pit fiend, no.

 

[Will]

Ok, I have a possible idea...

Elves live about 5-7x as long as humans. Let's assume, roughly, that they age about 1/5 as fast. (Ignoring childhood issues, another ball of monkeys)

Elves are often depicted as less numerous.


We now have the recipe to 'solve' the problem. Take a normal demographic for a city, assume that's for humans (for the most part).

Population is 1/5 normal for elves, level of inhabitants is +5. Commoners are, instead, another NPC class at +3 levels (typically 4th).

This strongly suggests that any elf of 3rd or lower level is a child, which ... works, IMO.

Using the EL calculation, there you go. If you decide the fraction should be different, then fine... but so long as you think the population should be lower to counterbalance it, the 'power' of a city should remain constant.


Thoughts?

 

[bmcdaniel]

Some of the posters here have already said this in slightly different terms, but the answer is really quite simple.

Long-lived elf adventurers are not generally higher-level than human adventures because VERY VERY FEW adventurers die of old age. For both elves and humans there is an almost perfect correlation between their death rate and their rate of xp advancement, because xp are earned for taking possibly fatal risks.

It is as simple as that. Almost by definition, for adventurers, ie those that take risks, the risk of dying in an adventure vastly swamps the risk of dying of old age*. As long as humans and elves gain go adventuring at the same rate, they will advance at the same rate and die at the same rate.

Thus, for the population as a whole, the proportion of the population of any given level will be about the same. The only difference will be that (small) subset of the population that goes adventuring but retires before death.

Of course, I also believe that elves, having much longer lives and therefore much more to lose, are less likely to go adventuring in the first place (i.e. elves are more risk averse). Whereas humans may go adventuring every year, elves are more likely to go every third year, thus slowing down their rate of death, but also their rate of advancement. This effect also tends to bring the populations into conformity.


-----------Footnotes Below------------------------------------------
* Consider, the PHB says average human maximum age (ie the age an average human will die by old age) is 90 years. Even among the non-adventuring population, few humans would actually reach this age; death will occur by accident, random violence, war or diasease. Of course it depends on the campaign, but I would guess that less than 5% of the non-adventuring human population actually reaches this age (and dies of old age). Adventurers must die at vastly greater rates, I'd guess that about .1% die of old age.

This also has interesting implications for elves and shows why they are so much more risk averse. If (non-adventuring) elves take the same risks and die at the same rates as (non-adventuring) humans, then only 0.0000015625% would actually die of old age at 550. My guess is that elves are risk-averse, compared to humans, at about the same ratio of their lifespans (1:6).

 

[Angcuru]

Is starting age for all characters 18?
Who says elfs have a low birth rate?
Would elfs overrun the earth?

A - It depends on class and race. Fighters and humans are the youngest class and race in terms of starting age. Mages and Elves are the oldest, in terms of years.

B - Elves have a conception rate of about 13%. Humans have a conception rate of 77%. Elves have pregnancy periods of 2 years, humans 9 months. So comparatively, while elves may have shorter pregnancies in terms of lifespan, humans make the babies WAY more often. If you were to assume that there were two Married couples, 1 human and 1 elven, and both went at it constantly to get as many kids as possible,(going by statistics here) the humans could pop out 51 kids, while elves will on average have 3 kids in that time period. They just outnumber the elves, man!
C - Look, if the elves wanted, they could dedicate their whole society to overrunning the world, and they could do it. There would be massive casualties and they would be irreversably evil, but they could do it. Not that they would.


And a general comment: In terms of ADVENTURERS, the elves could have MUCH higher level examples, being so much longer lived than the other races. If an elf continuously improved himself and didn't get killed, he would be WAAAAAAAY more powerful than what a human could hope to become, by natural means. Simply put, more time to improve=more improvement.